# How do you know if your release is successful? **URL:** \ **Category:** Archive\ **Created:** [19 February 2021 15:10 UTC](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/how-do-you-know-if-your-release-is-successful/47749 "2021-02-19T15:10:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![melissafisher](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/club.ministryoftesting.com/melissafisher/32/8020_2.png) [@melissafisher](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/u/melissafisher)\ **Post date:** [19 February 2021 15:10 UTC](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/how-do-you-know-if-your-release-is-successful/47749/1 "2021-02-19T15:10:59Z")
I’m thinking about how do we know if a release is successful or not - what are your thoughts on this? ---
**Author:** ![alanr](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/club.ministryoftesting.com/alanr/32/8488_2.png) [@alanr](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/u/alanr)\ **Post date:** [19 February 2021 16:19 UTC](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/how-do-you-know-if-your-release-is-successful/47749/2 "2021-02-19T16:19:20Z")
This is a question that I think spans far beyond the efficacy of development and testing. A release may be implemented to spec and functioning properly, but the release may not be successful if, for instance: it isn’t marketed to customers well, or perhaps the initial requirements don’t actually meet their needs. There’s a lot of non-technical work that goes into making a release successful. For this reason, I always enjoy hearing from our business team as to what customers think of our last release, as it’s really the only way to know for sure if it was successful. I think frequent communication between business and technical teams is crucial for this reason. Now, from a purely technical perspective, I would consider a release successful if we were able to deliver a high-quality product that met the requirements given in the time-frame we committed to. ---
**Author:** ![melissafisher](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/club.ministryoftesting.com/melissafisher/32/8020_2.png) [@melissafisher](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/u/melissafisher)\ **Post date:** [25 February 2021 16:23 UTC](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/how-do-you-know-if-your-release-is-successful/47749/3 "2021-02-25T16:23:12Z")
I think I need to learn more about product success in it’s entirety - not sure if there’s any resources out there to look into this. I’ll have a google to see what i can find. ---
**Author:** ![kristof](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/club.ministryoftesting.com/kristof/32/10839_2.png) [@kristof](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/u/kristof)\ **Post date:** [25 February 2021 16:39 UTC](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/how-do-you-know-if-your-release-is-successful/47749/4 "2021-02-25T16:39:39Z")
Some of these might help to create a bigger picture - automated sanity tests in production - Monitoring in production If the automated tests in prod fail (which are inside of the CI/CD pipeline) it will automatically be rolled back. ---
**Author:** ![sles12](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/club.ministryoftesting.com/sles12/32/11314_2.png) [@sles12](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/u/sles12)\ **Post date:** [1 March 2021 15:56 UTC](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/how-do-you-know-if-your-release-is-successful/47749/5 "2021-03-01T15:56:20Z")
I think it can be subjective to the team/product what counts as “successful”. So this sounds like a team activity to me. Find out what this means for you and judge your releases accordingly. For our team, working with a highly configurable product, we are happy with a couple of critical bugs, while for others this might be bad. I think @alanr also brought up a good point. A release might be technically good but if customer reception is bad is it still a successful release? Some ideas on what release success could be based on: - bugs found after release (number, severity, …) - usability (features, documentation, …) - release process (downtime, problems during release, …) - team feedback (speed, delay, process, …) - customer feedback (hotline calls, acceptance of new release, …) - … ---
**Author:** ![conrad.braam](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/club.ministryoftesting.com/conrad.braam/32/660_2.png) [@conrad.braam](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/u/conrad.braam)\ **Post date:** [1 March 2021 16:25 UTC](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/how-do-you-know-if-your-release-is-successful/47749/6 "2021-03-01T16:25:40Z")
Releasing late with no bugs is also a failure, for the business. And probably means your team needs to make a load of process improvements. It’s fair enough to think only about what you do control as a team, but as pointed out by @sles12 and @alanr , getting to production early with a healthy strategy to deal with the issues after release can also count as success.